Prince Harry will tell anyone who’ll listen that he’s taken to life in America like a duck to water, with the former royal recently insisting the US is home – for now.
However, his sunny outlook isn’t quite so obvious behind closed doors, one close insider tells New Idea exclusively.
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“Harry still finds America and its ways quite foreign,” says the source. “He worries about the social issues that are far more prevalent here, including gun violence. He spends most of his time trying to recreate his life back in London, including begging the few friends he has left in society circles to visit him.”
Indeed, New Idea understands his childhood friend Charlie van Straubenzee visited just last week, hot on the heels of his cousin Princess Eugenie staying with him and wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, at their Montecito home in February.
“Harry wishes he could just go for a pint at a pub with his mates, but that’s impossible in Santa Barbara, where he’d be immediately recognised,” says a source.
“It’s a far cry from his locals in London where publicans were happy to provide him private spaces to linger over a beer. It’s the little things like that he misses, as well as key things like safety.”
A separate source reveals Harry, 37, was “never that keen” to move to California, and instead was content with the “happy medium” provided by his and Meghan’s stay on Canada’s Vancouver Island over Christmas in 2019.
“The plan as far as Harry knew, was to trial life in Canada, where he could enjoy the trappings of his royal status in a Commonwealth country, but they’d be within a three-hour flight to LA to cater to Meghan’s Hollywood ambitions,” the insider says.
“But when COVID hit in 2020 and Canadian borders to the US were closing, Meghan hit the panic button and decided they should flee to LA.
“Six months later they’d bought a huge, expensive house in Montecito and Meghan was cold calling American politicians and booking them in with Netflix.
“It was a lot for Harry to digest and his head has only recently stopped spinning. He finds himself missing the quiet life in Canada very often.”
Among the Duke and 40-year-old Duchess’ many new showbiz commitments, Harry’s also found himself signing up to write a memoir – but that recently, and rather mysteriously, came to a standstill.
Despite Harry announcing he was collaborating with a ghostwriter and indicating the tome would be out this year, The Times UK revealed last week that it no longer has a release date.
“What that tells us is that Harry may finally be feeling some regret over the way he’s gone to town on his family in the past couple of years,” says a source. “His family will be hoping that’s the case.”
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